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CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

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1001

Troubleshooting Hard Drive Implementation

There’s no scarier computer problem than an error that points to trouble with

a hard drive. This section looks at some of the more common problems that

occur with hard drives and how to fix them. These issues fall into four broad

categories: installation errors, data corruption, dying hard drives, and RAID

issues.

Installation Errors

Installing a drive and getting to the point where it can hold data requires four

distinct steps: connectivity, system setup, partitioning, and formatting. If you

make a mistake at any point on any of these steps, the drive won’t work. The

beauty of this is that if you make an error, you can walk back through each

step and check for problems. The “Troubleshooting Hard Drive Installation”

section in Chapter 8 covered physical connections and system setup, so this

section concentrates on the latter two issues.

Partitioning Partitioning errors generally fall into two groups: failing to

partition at all, and making the wrong size or type of partition. You’ll

recognize the former type of error the first time you open Windows

Explorer/File Explorer after installing a drive. If you forgot to partition it, the

drive won’t even show up in Windows Explorer/File Explorer, only in Disk

Management. If you made the partition too small, that’ll become painfully

obvious when you start filling it up with files.

The fix for partitioning errors is simply to open Disk Management and do

the partitioning correctly. Just right-click and select Extend Volume to

correct the mistake. Remember that deleting any volume will permanently

delete any data on that drive.

Formatting Failing to format a drive makes the drive unable to hold data.

Accessing the drive in Windows results in a drive “is not accessible” error,

and from a C:\> prompt, you’ll get an “Invalid media type” error. Format the

drive unless you’re certain that the drive has a format already. Corrupted files

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